Who is the Sojourner?

One of the more abused biblical characters is the sojourner. I do not just mean that this actual person was abused in the biblical narrative. I mean that too many in our day become the abuser of the sojourner concept. Many have made this character a mascot for a political cause that most nations in human history would have rejected as laughable. 

Identifying the Character

The relevant Hebrew word גֵּר is translated alternately as sojourner, stranger, alien, foreigner, immigrant, or outsider.

Real sojourners are depicted as those who are on the run from some real harm to themselves and to their families. While they were not on a vacation, they were often, as we say, passing through. They were on a journey in a place to which they had no obvious claim. Much less were they presumptuous guests for whom there was an expectation to be snooping around on someone else’s property. For the most part, it was taken for granted that they were fleeing some clear and present danger.  Thus the Israelites were told, “You shall not oppress a sojourner. You know the heart of a sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 23:9; cf. 22:21).

This idea is more frequently discussed in Scripture than we may realize. Closely associated with the sojourner concept was the distinct identity of a neighbor. Yet this creates the exact difficulty that I want to address.

In the broadest sense, a neighbor is literally “any man” and yet practically not at all “any” in the sense of an abstraction. In other words, it is any flesh-and-blood human being that God has ordained to put in our path, but it was not a projection of our play-virtues that treat “humanity” in aggregates to avoid the harder work of caring for the real people in our lives. The parable that Jesus tells in response to the insincere quip, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29)—this very connection has been the occasion for committing the error opposite to that lawyer testing Jesus. 

A lesser known sixteenth century Reformer, Wolfgang Musculus, in his book On Righteousness, Oaths, and Usury, defined one’s neighbor as,

“someone who is bound to us at some point, either by religion, humanity, blood, affinity, friendship, either in familiar or civil society; or by proximity, or conjoined to us by some plight of necessity. God has mutually conjoined us together in many degrees, so that there are also many occasions for this hand of love and beneficence.”1

This may seem rather broad, as broad as divine providence may occasion. However, that is just the point. We have concentric circles, and it is divine providence which expands from the most ordinary central circle (one’s immediate family) outward to the rarest acquaintances, which is why we also call such a one “the stranger.” 

Another key word in that definition of Musculus is the word “bound.” A true neighbor is someone who is bound to us in one way or another. There is an agreement. There is a shared set of expectations and manners, be the bar ever so low.

The point is that the boundaries have not been transgressed. Worse yet—what is even more strange to the mere stranger, or what is most unlike even a minimalist neighbor, is one whose very relationship to us has been defined by the transgression of those boundaries, who has come near precisely by force or fraud.

Such is not a neighbor in the biblical sense, but is an invader. He matches our Lord’s description of the devil who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (Jn. 10:10).  

Understanding Our Duties

One alleged proof text for unqualified open borders comes from Leviticus 19:34. It says, “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.” Just further on in the same book Israel is told, “You shall have the same rule for the sojourner and for the native, for I am the Lord your God” (24:22).

“There you have it! The sojourner simply is to be defined, as far as God’s people are concerned, as natives; and anyone applying for the position, so to speak, is to be treated as such. The sojourner just is the neighbor. These commandments could not be any clearer.”

So goes the rationale. But is it valid? 

A few difficulties present themselves to this use of the Scripture: first, this use of the “definition text” is circular, begging the whole question as to whether or not Person X is in fact a sojourner by a right definition; second, the “equal status” text falls back on the initial difficulty and it assumes the distinction between sojourner and native as well, leaving aside the question of his permanent status; third, advocates for this position are opponents of both theonomy and Christian nationalism, so it violates their own principles to impose this law of Israel on any other political arrangement.

The Christian understands that in the ultimate sense, we are all fellow travelers in God’s land. We agree with the Psalmist: “I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers” (Ps. 39:12; cf. 1 Chr. 29:15). Moreover Jesus describes Himself in these terms: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Mat. 25:35).

As to imperatives, we might start with this: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Heb. 13:2). One of the heart attitudes behind such a readiness to welcome the outsider is that we are pilgrims: “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14).

These form imperatives for the Christian in that which is proper for us to open up in hospitality. But when we extend this principle to arenas beyond our own individual stewardship, we are begging the question again.  

That there are concentric circles of stewardship is a clear teaching of Scripture. Galatians 6:10, 1 Timothy 5:8, and 1 John 3:17 prioritize one’s own home and then one’s local church. Everything one is able to do beyond that is overflow; everything one is not able to do beyond that, yet coveted, is pretension.

The Bible never wholesale affirms or rejects immigration. There are instances in Israel of a mandate to repel outsiders, and other instances to welcome the sojourner. The rightness of each is contextual, and one often has to use natural law reasoning and realize that this is fundamentally a civic matter rather than a mission-of-the-church matter. National boundaries are not church boundaries.

It would be all the more ironic for the R2K advocate of today to argue that “the church should do such and such with respect to national immigration policy,” since they are so keen to lecture us all about confusing the ecclesial and civil spheres.2

Moreover, even the ecclesisal sphere has boundaries, letting a wider circle into our doors than we do into official membership, and yet again through the “back door” of church discipline. So both questions—Which sphere (ecclesial or civil)? and What stance (friendly or hostile)?—are typically ignored in this conversation.

Discerning the Difference

How one is able to tell the difference between a weary traveler and a hostile outsider is the business of the heads of every social sphere. This is true of kings, elders, and fathers. So the overarching principle here will apply to church and state, and even the home. Think about it. Have you ever encountered someone in need of help of one kind or another, only to have to do a quick check of whether your wife and kids are with you first? I have been in that situation many times.

This reminds us of the obvious fact that most people who dismiss such distinction usually do not have children, or very little responsibility in terms of caring for those who are weaker than they—and so, it becomes very easy to begin flexing their supposed charity muscles in high judgment over the “thoughtless” conservative who drives by and locks up on the outsider. In fact, that is just one more question never being asked: Is that really so?

The first thing that separates the men from the boys, so to speak, in making this discernment is whether or not what I have written here already strikes too much of a sensitive nerve. If the very reality of this challenge is too uncomfortable or positively offensive to someone, then rest assured that this someone is not a mature, healthy man in the way that God designed men to be.

The Bible is also filled with examples of the hostile takeover by adversarial guests. The Babylonian spies let in by Hezekiah (Isa. 39:2-4) and the false overtures by Sanballat and Tobiah toward Nehemiah, that turned to outright jeering (Neh. 2:10-20; 4:1-23), are two cases in point.

So there is a double-edged readiness for the Christian: “Peace be within your walls and security within your towers!” (Ps. 122:7) We are equally ready to extend peace and to repel violence. Or else, we are not adults in our thinking.

The principle is applied to the church, where Paul says,

“​Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Col. 4:5–6).

The implication here is that “each person” represents a unique circumstance. Therefore, be a wise person and not a fool. If Ruth shows up, earnestly seeking a husband and humbly earning her keep, a wise man will know it when he sees it.

If wave after wave of 18 to 30 year-old men, with new clothes, smartphones, and no women or children as far as the eye can see, from countries not even on one’s immediate border, begging all sorts of questions about what “war-torn” catastrophe they are allegedly fleeing—if that is what one means by the downtrodden pilgrim, well, wisdom would dictate that it is time to stop playing games and, like devils, tugging on the heart-strings of the naive.

In Adam’s domain, was the serpent a sojourner? “Oh, that is such a straw man!” someone may say. Is it though? The serpent is not above using other people—yes, even people genuinely seeking asylum or a better life—to sow division and violence of the sort that would not arise by the unassuming genuine article.

Here I have not even addressed the subject of nations viewed from the perspective of historical development and God’s own action at Babel to separate them even by the confusion of their languages. Neither the judgment element nor the common grace element of this separation into nations is ever on the radar screen of this discussion among Christians. It would exceed the boundaries of this introductory article, but I would only challenge the newcomer to this subject to consider going in that direction next in their study of it.

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1. Wolfgang Musculus, On Righteousness, Oaths, and Usury (Grand Rapids: Christian Library Press, 2013), xxxv.

2. For an understanding of the “Radical Two-Kingdom” (R2K) view, see my article entitled, “Pietisms: Old and New.”